Jacob Walla | Graduate Student

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I’m primarily interested in Depression and Anxiety in adolescents and young adults, especially in relation to minority stress; specifically, I’m interested in exploring how the LGBT experience, along with additional minority factors (race, disability, HIV status, etc), affects the mental health of people who are just reaching critical periods of independence and identity formation. I hope to elaborate on strategies to mitigate these detrimental effects through social support and improved identity management. Further, I am interested in the mental health effects of having an additional, ostracizing minority label (bisexuality, HIV status, etc) within the context of the LGBT community — a situation that often leads one to be shunned by their own community, eliminating a crucial form of a social support and paving the way to significant mental health consequences.